Craig Keener in his work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament, mentions Dowie and Lake as healers extraordinaire. But many of their claims have been revealed to be cons, including in the end, conning themselves.
Con Man, John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie and the Invention of Faith Healing, 1882-1889
John Alexander Dowie invented a new form of faith healing spectacle in the 1880s that was substantively different to all previous forms of “Divine Healing.”
Craig Keener in his work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament, mentions that “fourteen” raisings from the dead are attributed to “one of the most famous healing evangelists,”[1] a Pentecostal preacher from the U.K., named Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947). Keener adds that “Wigglesworth claimed that the greatest test of his obedience was when he called his just–deceased wife back to life but God told him to stop.”[2] (Really? The same God whose power allegedly raised her, also told him to stop? God should make up his mind.)
Ronnie Coyne lost his right eye in a baling wire accident when he was a boy, but claims he attended a healing service and afterwards could see out of his empty eye socket, either with his artificial eye in the empty eye socket or not. He grew up to become Rev. Roscoe Ronald Coyne, evangelist–healer. The late Mr. Coyne is no longer capable of being tested but his presentations can be seen in videos where the fraudulent nature of his claims become evident.
The following post is an extended endnote to an essay of mine to be published in fall 2019, “Tidal Wave or Trickle? Assessing Keener’s Miracles,” a chapter in The Case Against Miracles.
The Miracle of Speaking in Tongues?
As a former tongue–speaking Christian I tried spelling out what I was saying phonetically on paper and soon noticed the repetitive nature of many of the syllables, hardly much of a vocabulary. Also, people in the prayer groups I used to attend would sometimes “speak in tongues”
Concerning Jesusʼs post-resurrection appearances some apologists contend that we have accurate objective ‘eyewitness’ reports in 1 Cor. 15 and the Gospels and book of Acts.
Yet Paul does not give a single detail as to what anyoneʼs eyes ‘witnessed,’ not even himself (except for Lukeʼs account of
Craig S. Keener wrote in his book, “Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts” (2 Volume Set), Baker Academic, 2011:
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) [author of The Life of Jesus Critically Examined] explained early Christian miracle stories as myths depicted as history… Interestingly, Strauss did hear of contemporary miracle claims involving Lutheran pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt, and a friend of his found himself cured of inability to walk after visiting Blumhardt. Consistent with his worldview, however, Strauss apparently dismissed the friendʼs cure as psychosomatic.
Keener makes it sound like Straussʼs friend was incapable of walking, i.e., “inability to walk.” But no source I checked said that, not even Isingʼs book that Keener cited as his primary source. So Keener provides a perfect example of miracle enhancement in his summary retelling, or at the very least he has left it to his readers to imagine a worst case scenario of someone with no ability to walk. But that was not the case at all as we will see. Nor did the “cure” last.
The friend of D. F. Strauss who visited Blumhardt was the German romantic poet and pastor, Eduard Morike, see photo below. All three men knew each other in their youth.
According to the book by Ising that Keener footnotes, “Morike can walk only with difficulty.” He did not lack the ability to walk. Ising also adds:
Morike was planning on a treatment by ‘magnetizing’—that is, the stroking of hands on the head with inducement to hypnotic sleep, otherwise known as ‘mesmerizing,’ a form of hypnotism to help relieve pain. Blumhardt told Morike that magnetizing was harmful. Later that evening, when Blumhardt accompanies Morike to his lodging Morike says that he senses more strength in his body than usual. Blumhardt smiles. “There is something special in the Mottlingen air; he should remain with Blumhardt here; no where else will he find it better.” The weakness in his backbone that is seen as the cause of his walking difficulties disappears. Morike leaves Mottlingen and Blumhardt to visit hot springs in Bad Teinach for his rhematic pain but returns once again to see Blumhardt, and reports to Wilhelm Hartlaub that now he is able to go on mountain hikes in burning heat. But his improvement does not last. In Feb. 1850 rhematic complaints reappear; in June 1850 he tries a Mergentheim water cure to relieve arthritic pains in his feet and legs. Source: Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Life and Work: A New Biography by Dieter Ising and Monty Ledford
Another scholarly source tells the story this way:
[Eduard] Morike had back pain and limb numbness. At the end of his weekend with his old friend pastor Blumhardt he received a parting prayer and laying on of hands and soon exuded such energy that physicians believed Morike a healthy man for nearly a year. The two friends, however, viewed the healing less a ‘miracle’ than a ‘gift’ symbolizing Morikeʼs return to faith after a period of doubt…
The cure stories at [Blumhardtʼs church] are not extraordinary for their pronouncement of miraculous causes, located as they are in a century of ecstatic camp meetings, urban revivals and Marian apparitions…
[The accounts of healings at Blumhardtʼs church] illuminate… the significance that each of the actors [in the healing stories] attached to the rituals before participating in them. Blumhardt and his penitents approached the confession expecting a profound religious experience. Hence, while there are reports of laymen who expected a sensation that never arrived, there are none to my knowledge of those who were caught unaware…
Blumhardtʼs miracles… bolstered the devotion of thousands to the promises of the revival while planting seeds of interest in thousands more, the majority never cured of anything… [And] the exodus of pilgrims from neighboring villages brought the ire of fellow pastors, and stern admonitions… from the consistory in Stuttgart who ordered Blumhardt “to direct the foreigners to the means of edification that are available in their hometowns.”
SOURCE: Daniel Kohler, “Pilgrimage of Protestants: Miracles and Religious Community in J. C. Blumhardtʼs Wurttemberg, 1840-1880,” a chapter in Die Gegenwart Gottes in der Modernen Gesellschaft: Transzendenz und Religiose Vergemeinschaftung in Deutschland / The Presence of God in Modern Society: Transcendence and Religious Community in Germany (German) 2006 by Michael Geyer, Lucian Holscher.
Another source notes that “His [Morikeʼs] health never improved sufficiently to allow him more than a few hours of productivity for weeks or months at a time… His own illness caused him constant pain, and his death on June 4, 1875 was not unexpected.” In context the source reads:
[Morike] was subject to rheumatic pains and eye trouble, and in 1823 we hear of an undefined ‘weakness in the chest.’ Today we could venture the hypothesis that he was suffering from the aftereffects of scarlet fever, but at his time medicine was not advanced enough to make such a diagnosis… Patiently he tried to show her that it would be wiser to wait for a parish in a climate beneficial to his health [in the mid 1800s there was no pollution control but plenty of smoke stacks spewing black smoke as industrialization took off as well as a lack of proper sanitation in cities making people not want to take a deep breath due to the stink, nor were houses easily climate controlled but still employed fire or coal burning systems and lacked air conditioning, so moving to a different clime could indeed aid a personʼs health]… In the meantime, the old struggle with his poor health and his antipathy to preaching also continued in these outwardly idyllic years… In November 1842, his superiors gave him the choice of either doing his work without help or going into retirement on a very low pension. Morike chose retirement; and at thirty-nine he moved with his sister to the spa of Schwabisch-Hall to take the [therapeutic/healing] waters and then at that end of 1844, when the climate still proved too harsh, to Bad Mergentheim… [he was] a poet whose nerves reacted to the slightest change in atmosphere, which he so beautifully depicted in his poetry… It seems tragic, then, that he gained his freedom too late to enjoy it, since his health never improved sufficiently to allow him more than a few hours of productivity for weeks or months at a time… Morke married Margarete November 25, 1851, after they had known each other for seven years. The courtship [that began around 1845] put an end to the two yearsʼ silence of Morikeʼs poetic genius just after his retirement. The years after 1845 were very fruitful ones for the poet… But his happy home life began to show signs of strain as the poet and his wife became older. Gretchen had always been a very sensitive person and took her illnesses just as seriously as the poet took his… His own illness caused him constant pain, and his death on June 4, 1875 was not unexpected.
Source: Eduard Morike by Helga Slessarev, University of Cincinnati (New York: Twayne Publishers 1970)
Also, as Ising admits, Blumhardt “does not cover up the fact that there are disappointments; not everybody experiences healing. Among these are people with ‘black star’ [cataracts] or those with congenital blindness or deafness… his prayer also seems ineffective for his mother-in-law.”
Is it any surprise that D. F. Strauss was not impressed when he heard of Morikeʼs “cure” at Blumfeldtʼs church?
Morike at the time of his temporary ‘healing’ was also engaged to a young lady he was excited about marrying, so Strauss added in a letter that it was probably not Blumhardt who cured Morike but “the god of love [Cupid?], who alone clearly delivered [Morike]…”
And Be Sure To Follow The Continuing Review Of Keenerʼs Book On Miracles By Matthew Ferguson Here.
The Bible contains the same exaggerated speech, boastful lies and holy hyperbole common for its day and age.
Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ [or flute, NIV]. - Genesis 4:21
“All?” Were the ancient Hebrews claiming that one person in particular brought musical instruments to the world, just as the Greeks portrayed Prometheus as the one human-like god who brought fire down from heaven and gave it to all of humanity? It would appear so, even though stringed instruments and blowing instruments were probably invented numerous times by countless numbers of people over the ages and round the world after someone plucked something or blew into something and enjoyed what they heard.
In this passage, Hebrew spies tell their desert-wandering comrades what they found in Canaan:
…all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. - Numbers 13:32-33
The spies are clearly exaggerating (cf. Barker, p. 210). If “all the people” were of such great size, one wonders how to account for the apparently normal size of Rahab, the Gibeonites, and others that Joshua encounters upon entering Canaan 38 years later (cf. Joshua 6:25, 9:3-15). - Peter T. Chattaway, Giants in the Bible, RELG 303, March 10, 1994
The camels were without number as the sand of the sea.
- Judges 7:12
If the entire surface of the earth was filled with camels they would not be “without number,” nor would they be as plentiful as “the sand of the sea.”
As the host of heaven cannot be counted, and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David.
- Jeremiah 33:22
A Hebrew cultural-centric exaggeration. The number of Davidʼs descendants is nowhere near the number of stars in heaven, nor sand in the sea.
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at a hairʼs breath, and not miss.
- Judges 20:16
Seven hundred who could sling stones at “a hairʼs breath,” and “not miss?” Iʼm surprised the authorʼs nose didnʼt grow when he told that one. Even the greatest sharp shooters at the turn of this century, who performed in Wild West traveling shows, and shot cards out of each otherʼs hands, did not retire with all their fingers—because they “missed” some shots by “a hairʼs breath.”
Their slain shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.
- Isaiah 34:3
It would take quite a lot of blood to melt a mountain. Isaiah must have been confusing mountains with molehills.
The famine was over all the face of the earth….And all countries came unto Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; because the famine was so sore in all lands.
- Genesis 41:56,57
“Over all the face of the earth… all countries… all lands?” More exaggerated speech. Were folks in far off China and Japan and Australia and North and South America “sorely famished” and had to go to “Egypt” to buy corn?
[In one of the plagues with which the Lord smote Egypt] All the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 8:17
Doesnʼt the Bible use the word “dust” to describe the ground, mud, and sand upon which we all walk as in “the dust of the earth?” Therefore if “all the dust of the land became lice” would not the Egyptians have drowned in lice and the pyramids been adrift in seas of lice? “Knock, knock.” “Whoʼs there?” “Lice.” “Lice Who?” “Run for your lice!”
Another exaggerated way of speaking. Or perhaps the Lord resurrected the “firstborn” among the cattle just so he could smite them again?In one plague with which the Lord smote Egypt “all the cattle of Egypt died.” But a few days after that, “all the firstborn cattle died.”
- Exodus 9:6 & 12:29
[The Lord said to the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert] “This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.”
- Deuteronomy 2:25
A typical Hebrew cultural-centric exaggeration, i.e., to speak of the nations “under the whole heaven… shall hear report of thee… and tremble.”
In the year 1553 Michael Servetus was on trial for his life in Geneva, Switzerland on the charge of heresy. One point raised by the prosecution was Servetusʼs edition of Ptolemyʼs Geography, in which Judea (the “promised land” of the Jews), was spoken of, not as “a land flowing with milk and honey,” but mainly meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by Protestant Refomer, John Calvin, with fearful power. In vain did Servetus plead that he had simply drawn the words from a previous edition of Ptolemy; in vain did he declare that this statement was a simple geographical truth of which there were ample proofs; it was answered that such language “necessarily inculpated Moses, and grievously outraged the Holy Ghost.”
A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Vol. 1
I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion… Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen [as slaves] for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.
- Psalm 2:6,8,9,12
The above psalm is believed to have been sung at the coronations of Hebrew kings. Another Hebrew cultural-centric exaggeration. (Though it must be admitted that this psalm later proved popular with some Catholics and Protestants who used it to justify their “breaking” of the “heathen,” driving them into slavery and stealing their land in alleged fulfillment of this exaggerated Biblical promise.)
[Jesus said] “The Queen of the South [i.e., the Queen of Sheba] came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.”
- Matthew 12:42
The Queenʼs residence, being probably on the Arabian Gulf, could not have been more than twelve or fourteen hundred miles from Jerusalem. If that is the “uttermost parts of the earth” then it is a small world after all.
All the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom.
- 2 Chronicles 9:23
“All the kings of the earth?” Another silly Hebrew cultural-centric exaggeration.
The devil took him [Jesus] up into an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.
- Matthew 4:8
Shown “all the kingdoms of the world” from an “exceedingly high mountain?” I suppose so, if the mountain was “exceedingly high” and the earth was flat. Verses in the Bibleʼs book of Daniel presume a flat earth the same way that verses in Matthew do:
I saw a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth.
- Daniel 4:10-11
Instead of an “exceedingly high” mountain from which “all the kingdoms of the earth” can be seen, Daniel pictures a tree “whose height was great,” growing from the “midst” or center of the earth and “seen” to “the ends of all the earth.”
Funny how such flagrantly flat-earth verses appear in both the Old and New Testaments. “Bible believers” will of course reply that such verses are only “apparently difficult” to explain, and not the “real truth” as they see it. But it is the “apparent difficulties” that remain in the Bible, as it was written, and they will always remain there, regardless of all the ingenuity employed in explaining them away.
A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.
- Luke 2:1
“All the inhabited earth?” The Romans and Hebrews indulged in the same cultural-centric exaggerations when it came to viewing their cultures as central to “all the earth.”
And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.
- Acts 2:5
“Out of every nation under heaven?” Another exaggeration.
A great famine all over the world took place in the reign of Claudius.
- Acts 11:28
“All over the world?” Another exaggeration.
Paul the apostle wrote:
Their voice [of first-century proclaimers of the Christian Gospel] has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
The mystery is now manifested and… has been made known to all the nations.
The gospel, which has come to you, just as in all the world.
The gospel… which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul was made a minister.
- Romans 10:18; 16:25-26; Colossians 1:5-6,23
Sorry Paul, but “Their voice” (of Christians proclaiming the Gospel) had only reached a handful of churches in the Roman Empire when you wrote the above verses. The Gospel had not reached, nor been proclaimed in “all the earth,” nor “to the ends of the world,” nor “to all nations,” and certainly not “in all creation under heaven,” not like you said it “has” and “was.” (Three billion people on earth still havenʼt heard “the Gospel,” at least not according to a statement made by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2004.)
The early church father, Iraenaeus, maintained Paulʼs charade when he wrote:
“Now the Church, spread throughout all the world even to the ends of the earth;” “….even though she has been spread over the entire world;” “Anyone who wishes to see the truth can observe the apostleʼs traditions made manifest in every church throughout the whole world.” (Iraenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.10.1, 1.10.2, 3.3.1-2)
Not a very big “world,” mind you, leaving out most of Asia and Africa, not to mention the continents of Australia, North America and South America.
If an all-wise God had inspired the Bible He would have been able to give its human authors a few inspired geography lessons, just to show them how big the earth really is. Instead the Bible contains the same exaggerated speech, boastful lies and holy hyperbole common for its day and age, rather than evidence of special inspiration.
Furthermore, if the Bible is speaking in an exaggerated fashion when it speaks of “all the earth,” “to the ends of the earth,” “from the uttermost parts of the earth,” “all the inhabited earth,” “in all creation under heaven,” “under all the heavens,” and, “every nation under heaven,” then how can anyone be expected to assume that the statement, “everywhere under the heavens,” as found in the tale of the Flood of Noah isnʼt also an exaggeration? (It says in Gen. 7:17, “The water prevailed… and all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.” Why couldnʼt the phrase, “everywhere under the heavens,” be another exaggeration to make the Hebrew version of the Flood story (which they stole from the Sumerians/Babylonians) sound more impressive and appeal to the cultural-centrism of the Hebrewʼs? After all, they did also change the name of the storyʼs hero and the name of the mountain upon which the boat eventually rested, just to suit their culture.
Having run across so many instances of cultural-centric exaggerated speech in the Bible one even wonders what is to become of the central Christian boast, the exaggeration par excellence, namely that Jesus died for the sins of “the world?” Believers from every sacred tradition boast that their beliefs affect “the world,” or must be taken utterly seriously by “the world.” Must they? I cannot take seriously many instances in which Biblical authors exaggerate about the extent of a famine, a census, the distance to a queenʼs residence, the extent to which a message has been spread, the extent of a flood, etc. And, didnʼt “orthodox” Christian doctrines and theology arise via exaggerating the importance of some of the alleged teachings of Jesus above others (as well as by exaggerating the importance of some interpretations of those sayings above rival interpretations)?
The Gospel of John ends with this verse:
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
- John 21:25
“The world itself” could not contain the books of “many other things which Jesus did?” The author of the Fourth Gospel was not displaying much prophetic ability when he wrote that line, I guess he wasnʼt inspired enough to foresee that we can now store whole libraries in a single laptop computer and accompanying CDs.
Moreover, the books we do have that tell of “things Jesus did,” consist of only four slim “Gospels,” not one of them over forty pages in length. Two of them, Matthew and Luke, even repeat over 90% of what appears in Mark. So the four Gospels minus the overlapping portions would be even slimmer. Not a lot of “books” about what Jesus did Iʼm afraid. To reiterate the silly last sentence in the fourth Gospel:
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
Is there a less convincing way for an allegedly “inspired” book to end than with the faltering phrase, “I suppose?”
“I suppose” such a last verse made sense to believers back then, who were being regaled and entertained by ever new and fabulous tales of Jesusʼs infancy, youth and adulthood churned out by their fellows and incorporated into additional “Gospels” many of which we only know the titles of today. But ending an inspired book with such a silly exaggeration, followed by the faltering words, “I suppose,” does not make much of an impression, not even strictly literarily speaking.
Take the following verses:
[Jesus said] If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
- Matthew 5:29-30, repeated redundantly in Matthew 18:8[Jesus said] If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
- Matthew 18:8
[Jesus also taught] All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs… which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
- Matthew 19:12
The inspired words concerning “cutting off” body parts to avoid being “cast into hell,” along with Jesusʼs praise of those who “made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven,” made a deep impression on Origin (an early church Father). He castrated himself.
During the sixteenth century both Catholics and Protestants liked to cite the verses about “cutting off body parts” as a justification behind the censoring and execution of heretics in order that heresies might not spread to the rest of the “body of Christ” and the whole of Christendom risk being “cast into hell.”
And in the 1700 to 1800s a group of Christians in Russia called the Skoptzies cut off their own testicles and scrotums. Female members mutilated their vulvas, breasts and nipples. (“For the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.” Luke 23:29) Furthermore, they taught that if you also removed your penis (or removed both breasts if you were female) you would be granted the highest honors in heaven. Apparently with the aid of a perfect holy book like the Bible and with the promise of the Holy Spirit to “lead believers into all truth,” this was the truth that the Skoptzies came up with. Bodily sexual temptations could lead to hell, so if mutilating the body aided a person in denying those temptations, it increased oneʼs chances of avoiding hell and attaining heaven.
Maybe God could have used less emphatic language and not linked the cutting off of body parts with avoiding hell? “Let him who has ears to hear…”
“Whaaat? I canʼt hear you, I recently cut my ears off. They ‘offended’ me. And I would rather be in heaven without them than be cast into everlasting fire with them.”
Construction worker Thomas W. Passmore, 32, filed a lawsuit in April for $3.35 million against Sentara Norfolk, Virginia, General Hospital and four doctors over the loss of his hand. Passmore admits to having cut off the hand because he believed it to be possessed by the devil and to having refused twice to allow doctors to reattach it. However, he claims the hospital was negligent in not asking his family to overrule his poor decision.
- Tulsa World (AP), May 14, 1996
According to the story above, Mr. Passmore thought he saw the number “666” on his right hand, and, “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is better to enter eternal life maimed than have two hands and be cast into everlasting fire.” Mr. Passmore sued the hospital for not having reattached his hand, but he is an adult and if the hospital had operated against his will he might have sued anyway for violating his wishes, or maybe even for violating his “freedom of religion,” like when Jehovahʼs Witnesses deny themselves blood transfusions, and the doctors must comply even if that person is bleeding to death, because the Jehovahʼs Witness religion interprets the Biblical passage, “the life is in the blood” to mean that blood transfusions are forbidden.
Ivan Henk, of Plattsmouth, Neb., whose son, Brendan Gonzalez, age 4, had been missing since Jan. 6, admitted in a courtroom outburst in April that he killed his son. “The reason I killed Brendan is that he was the Antichrist. He had 666 on his forehead.”
- Lincoln Journal Star, April 30, 2003A thirty-two-year-old Filipino farmer sliced his genitals off with a machete in a fit of religious fervor because he believed his penis was leading him to sin. In a follow-up to this story: He was right, and it worked.
- Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live News
Jimmy Fallonʼs joke was based on a 2002 or 2003 news story, and not that unusual for the Philippines because every Easter a number of fervent Christians in that country publicly act out Jesusʼs sufferings: They are whipped, or walk down the road carrying a cross from which they are later suspended with ropes. In a few extraordinary cases, some people have even sought to be crucified, but not to death.
[Jesus commanded] Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away.
- Matthew 5:42Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again… But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
- Luke 6:30,35
Next time an evangelical Christian targets you with their soul-seeking missiles, tell them to look up the above verses and read them aloud. After which, ask them for their Bible. If they do not give you their Bible then ask them to please turn to the end of the same sermon in which Jesus spoke the verses above, and read aloud what Jesus said at the very end of that sermon, emphasizing the word “doeth”:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father….Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man… And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man.
- Matthew 7:21-24,26
Remind your evangelical friend that if they do not “doeth” what Jesus commandeth them, they risk hearing Jesus say unto them, “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity!” Is that what they want to hear Jesus say to them? Or do they want to give you their Bible, since you asked them for it?
After they have handed it over, tell them, “Thank you,” and say that you donʼt want to keep their Bible forever, nor destroy it. You would just like them to read a few books about the Bible, books that take a more “inquisitive” approach to the Bible and Christianity, like Hitting Below the Bible Belt. And then you will return their Bible to them.
Speaking of “giving to all who ask,” hereʼs an idea for the IRS to try. They should print Mat. 5:42 and Luke 6:30 on all tax forms. Beneath the verses should be a little note from the IRS that says, “We ask all Bible believing Christians, especially wealthy televangelists and pastors of mega-churches, to not claim religious tax exemptions this year.”
In fact, I invite everyone to ask their “Bible believing Christian” friends for money every day and keep asking, especially any fat cat Christian ministers they might know. Call their TV stations and radio stations, stand up in their mega-churches, etc., and quote the above verses and ask them for money. There is no limit put on the above commands.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name… They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.
- Mark 16:17-18
This promise (which does not appear in the earliest known manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark) has inspired crippling illnesses and fatalities, including the death of the founder of the “serpent-handling” sect of Baptists who died from a poisonous snakebite.
Of course, if any Christians truly believe that “if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them,” why donʼt they move their families to homes built on toxic landfills which they could buy for a prayer?
Toxic Acres is the place for me!
Mark 16 lets me live there comfortably.
Land spreadinʼ out so cheap and wide.
Keep sin city just gimmie that DI-OXIDE!
According to the Bible the number of people who followed Moses out of Egypt during the Exodus was “about six hundred thousand on foot that were men.” (Ex. 12:37) To that number must be added women, children, and a “mixed multitude” of non-Hebrews who followed Moses out of Egypt, raising the total way above the six hundred thousand Hebrew males, and nearer to a grand total of two million men, women and children. That is like the population of New Orleans (or Columbus, Ohio, or San Antonio, Texas), being kept on the move (following “a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night”) every day for forty years. The only day of the week they were not moving was the Sabbath day. Thatʼs a heap of packing and unpacking—of setting up “camp” and breaking it down again. Of course, God miraculously prevented the Israelitesʼ shoes and clothes from wearing out during the 40 years in the wilderness (Deut. 29:5), and their knee joints too, apparently (though the latter miracle is not mentioned). Plus we are to believe that all the men who were “warriors” walked “outside the camp” (a really huge camp) each time they had to go to the bathroom.
Moreover, there were sacrificial/sacramental duties that also needed to be performed for two million people (must have fit those in at night after they had ceased wandering each day), and the Bible only mentions Aaron and his two sons as being available to conduct all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, thank-offerings for all of the Israelites. (Num. 3:10) Just the number of pigeons to be brought as sin-offerings for newly born children, would have averaged, based on a “multitude” of nearly two million “wanderers,” more than 250 a day, not counting all the bulls, sheep, lambs, rams, goats, and turtle doves needing to be sacrificed for reasons too numerous to mention—and their carcasses having to be bled ceremonially, the fat removed meticulously, the organs burned as an offering to God, and the carcass dragged “outside the camp” to be burned (a camp of perhaps 16 miles in diameter).
Miraculously, these two million or so Israelites left no traces of their forty-years in the wilderness. No traces of encampments, tent holes, potshards (or other items discarded during their marches), nor traces of their daily sacrifices—no evidence of large charred ash deposits nor blackened stones nor bones. (Oddly enough archaeologists have discovered the remains of a small fire in the Sinai wilderness that was carbon-dated back to about that time. But one small fire could not have warmed the alleged two million who marched nearly every day for 40 years up and down the Sinai.)
So staggering are the problems raised by the exaggerated Biblical number of “600,000 males” (an embarrassingly well attested number, repeated three more times in the Bible—on each occasion each separate tribe being numbered, the sum of the results making up the whole), that even conservative Christian scholars have admitted that “600,000 men,” beside children, women, and the mixed multitude, is an exaggeration on par with many others found in ancient Near Eastern lore.
Evangelical Christian, W. M. Flinders Petrie, author of Egypt and Israel (London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1911) pointed out, “There are… two wholesale checks upon the total numbers. The land of Goshen recently supported 4,000 Bedouin living like the Israelites, or at present holds 12,000 cultivators. To get “600,000 men” with their families out of that district would be utterly impossible. Also on going south the Israelites had almost a drawn battle with the Amalekites of Sinai. The climate of that desert peninsula has not appreciably changed; it will not now support more than a few thousand people, and the former inhabitants cannot have exceeded this amount. How could the Israelites have had any appreciable resistance from a poor desert folk, if they outnumbered them as a hundred to one? Again, we are compelled to suppose that the Israelites were not more than a few thousand altogether. Thus we see that more cannot be got out of Goshen or into Sinai.”
In the 18th century, Frederick the Great had an army of 83,000 troops when he became King of Prussia. Other states—Austria, France, and Russia—fielded larger armies, but rarely did they approach 100,000 troops. Frederickʼs greatest victories—Rossbach and Leuthen—involved about 75,000 and 115,000 troops respectively on both sides. Napoleonʼs greatest victory—Austerlitz—involved about 150,000 troops total. So did Gettysburg, Americaʼs greatest Civil War battle. Alexander the Great, who controlled Greece, Macedonia, Thrace (Southern Yugoslavia), and a little bit of Western Anatolia, was able to raise between 90,000 and 100,000 troops total. Yet the Bible says that Hebrew kings, David and Saul, fielded far larger armies than those. King David had 1.57 million troops (1 Chron. 21:5)….or 340,000 plus the muster of Issacher….or 1.3 million (depending on which verses you read). While King Saul could field 210,000 troops. (1 Sam. 15:4)
Did the dry scrubland of Judea—populated by scattered villages and small settlements—raise up armies larger than the Persian Empireʼs when it faced destruction at Alexanderʼs hand, larger than Frederick the Greatʼs, larger than Napoleonʼs in all his battles save the invasion of Russia, larger than the Unionʼs and Confederacyʼs in their epic struggle? Truly such a feat must constitute one of the least heralded miracles in the Bible.
In the ancient world only the greatest powers, such as the Bronze Age Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and later the Persians, fielded armies upward of 50,000 or more…When Egyptʼs king Ramesses II fought the Hittites at Kadesh in about 1285 B.C.E., he recorded their force as 37,000 infantrymen and 3,500 chariots and said that the Hittites mustered much of the military power of their empire, which covered most of Anatolia, Syria, and a bit of Iraq (Sir Alan Gardiner, The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, 1975, p.41-42). Ramesses had possibly the largest army Bronze Age Egypt ever fielded. It is worth noting that in his poetic account of the battle of Kadesh, Ramesses claimed to have personally killed “hundreds of thousands” of Hittites and their allies (Ibid., pp 10-13), and Ramesses probably lost the battle. (Propaganda was invented long before the Israelites appeared.)
William Sierichs, Jr., “Those Amazing Biblical Numbers: Taking Stock of the Armies of Ancient Israel,” The Skeptical Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1995
According to the Bible, Abishai & Jashobeam each slew 300 men using only a spear (2 Sam. 23:8 & 1 Chron. 11:11). But thatʼs nothing, because Shamgar slew 600 men with an ox-goad (Judges 3:31). And Adino slew 800 with a spear (2 Sam. 23:8) Do ya suppose Adino was the inventor of Shish-ka-bob? Last but not least, Samson slew 1000 men with the jaw-bone of an ass (Judges 15:15). If only their techniques in the lethal arts of the “spear,” the “ox-goad” and the “jaw-bone” had been preserved for posterity, imagine what martial arts films Chinese directors could make today, featuring hundreds of deaths in one long (and obscenely bloody) scene!
It is certain that one cannot build up a chronology on the spans of years attributed to the Patriarchs, nor regard it as factual that Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Harran and a hundred when Isaac was born and that Jacob was a hundred and thirty when he went into Egypt, for the evidence from the skeletons in the Jericho tombs shows that the expectations of life at this period was short. Many individuals seem to have died before they were thirty-five, and few seem to have reached the age of fifty.
- Dr. Kathleen Kenyon (the eminent excavator of the city-mound of Jericho)
According to ancient Sumerian/Babylonian “king lists,” their kings could live for tens of thousands of years, but of course the worthies of the kings lists were not merely men, but gods or demigods (“kings from heaven”), whose ages could consequently be recorded astronomically. The Hebrew authors dealt only with men, and therefore the ages they assigned to them are comparatively modest, less than a thousand years, because above one thousand years is a perspective proper to God alone. (Ps. 90:4). (The Hebrews were partial to that number, “1000,” as anyone can see who does a “search” for it throughout the Bible.)
Interestingly, both the “king lists” and the Hebrew list of the patriarchs are composed of ten kings/patriarchs. And in both lists the number of years that a king reigned (or patriarch lived) dropped after “the Flood.” (The Sumerian/Babylonians had their own “Flood” story that pre-dates the one found in Genesis.) In fact the Babylonian kingʼs ages dropped after their “Flood story” to ages appropriate to the ages of the Hebrew patriarchs before the Flood, i.e., none of the kings after the Flood reigned longer than 960 years.
Professor Bruce Vawtner in A Path Through Genesis, suggests that “Both the Hebrews and Sumerians/Babylonians knew that many more than ten generations had elapsed during these periods. To bridge over the enormous gaps in time, therefore, both of them assigned tremendous ages to the few names that they possessed. While the Babylonians simply set down astronomical figures, none of them under twenty thousand years, the Hebrew author has been comparatively moderate, and above all, he made his ten generations serve a religious purpose.”
But before discussing the ages of the Biblical patriarchs further, one must note that there are three different sources for the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Masoretic text, the Septuagint text, and the Samaritan text, and they record slightly different ages for the patriarchs, and different totals as well if you added all their ages up in a straight line one after the other. The MT gives a total of 1656 years, the Septuagint gives 2242 years, while the Samaritan text gives 1307 year. The MT is the one used in most modern day Bible translations. According to the MT text, Noah is the first man to be born (in the year 1056) after the death of Adam (in the year 930). Thus the author singles out Noah at birth as the beginning of the new generation of post-Adamic man that will follow after the Flood. This contrivance is further strengthened by the Hebrew authorʼs choice to have Methuselah, the longest lived man of the old generation (before the Flood) die precisely in the year when the Flood begins. A clean sweep, therefore, is made of all the patriarchs that preceded Noah and the Flood. And this neatly excludes any implication that the patriarchs were linked to the corrupt world that had to be destroyed, since the last, and the most aged of them dies immediately prior to the Flood. At least thatʼs according to ages given in the MT version of the Old Testament.
Secondly, in the MT the age at which the patriarchs “begot,” drops progressively till the beginning of the second half of the list is reached with Jared. Adam, who precedes the first five on the list, and Jared, who precedes the last five of the original ten patriarchs, also lives an identical length of time after “begetting,” i.e., 800 years. Jared also begins his “begetting” 32 years later than Adam, which happens to be 1/2 of the 65 years at which Mahalalel and Enoch (who come directly before and after Jared on the list) begin “begetting.” Enoch, the traditional holy man of the period, who occupies the symbolic 7th place on the list (and whom God “took”) also lived a symbolic number of years (365 being the number of days in the solar year). And simply by doubling Enochʼs year at “begetting,” you arrive at Adamʼs. In fact, all of the numbers of the MT for the ages of the patriarchs, aside from the total age of Methuselah, are in multiples of five or in multiples of five with the addition of seven (seven being the most popular number in the Bible, appearing in various capacities at total of over 500 times). The ancient Sumerian/Babylonian kings list employed a similar fancy of “adding seven” to numbers, like when in two places it explicitly stated that the total length of the monarchic period preceding the Babylonian Flood was “a great sar plus seven sar.”
Other aspects also hint of artifice: In Gen. 6:3 God “allows” man 120 years to live. (“120” is “50” plus “70,” much like the way the ages of the patriarchs in the Masoretic Text of Genesis are all divisible by “5” with the addition sometimes of “7.”) Moses, the supposed author of the passage about God “allowing” man to live 120 years, goes on to live exactly 120 years. Yet in Ps. 90:10 we are told that man lives only 70 years (ah, thereʼs that “7” again). Joseph went to Egypt, and lo, lived to be the ideal Egyptian age of 110 years; then Joshua retrieves Josephʼs bones from Egypt and also lives 110 years. Lastly, compare how awkwardly the author of Gen. 11:10-26 and Gen. 25:8 juxtaposes the scene at Abrahamʼs death with the age of his distant relative, Shem, as though he had no idea that people still lived so long as Shem. For the author states that Abraham died “at a good old age, an old man, after a full life,” while Shem, Abrahamʼs 7X great grandfather lived to SEE his 7X great grandson die “at a good old age, an old man, after a full life!” for Shem was, if we take Gen. 11:10-26 literally, alive and 565 years old when Abraham died at a mere 175 years of age.
Vawterʼs book in chapter 6 and 7 discusses some of the other artifices. All in all, the ages of the patriarchs like the ages of the Sumerian/Babylonian kings, appear mythically larger than life, growing less so the nearer each king (or patriarch) came to the authorʼs actual day. “The Flood” was of course a major disjunction in both their mythologies, separating the world of demi-god-kings (or patriarchs whose father was “born at the creation and walked with God”) with the latter world nearer to the authorʼs own day.
Ancient Israelites used to rely heavily on biblical writings for information about the world, such writings constituted a Holy Answer Book to questions both large and small:
How did heaven and earth and the things in them come to be? See the Creation story.
Why do the sexes love each other so much? Why do women experience great pain during childbirth? Why does it take so much effort to grow crops to feed ourselves instead of us being able to live in a luxurious garden with fruit and green plants we can pluck and eat at will? Why do snakes go on their bellies? Why do humans hate them so much? Where did death come from? Why do humans have the god-like attribute of great knowledge but return to the dust like animals instead of enjoying the other god-like attribute, immortality? Why do humans wear clothes? See the Garden of Eden story.
Where do rainbows come from? See the Flood story.
Will there ever be another Flood like the one in Noahʼs day? —a question of grave concern to people who believed that creation arose in the midst of primeval waters and continued to be surrounded on all sides by water that was held back by divine power, and should that divine power release its grip then creation would be reduced again to its original watery “empty and void” state. See the Creation and Flood stories.
Why are there so many different languages and tribes spread out upon the earth? See the Tower of Babel story.
How did Israel come to have this glorious land of Canaan? See the Exodus story.
Non-Israelite nations invented their own legendary answers as to why the world was the way it was. Where do rainbows come from? A Babylonian legend in The Epic of Gilgamesh says rainbows are the lapis lazuli necklace of Ishtar that she placed in the sky to remind her never to flood the world again. Why do spiders spin webs? Because a seamstress named Arachne challenged the Greek goddess Athena to a spinning contest which the mortal won, but was a little too sassy about it, so the goddess changed her into the very first spider, and said, “O.K., now you can spin all you want.”
Additional answers provided by Israelite legends include the following:
Why are there two great lights (literal Heb. “great lamps”) in the sky that appear and disappear at regular intervals? God provided them so we can measure the time between religious festivals (the Hebrew word for “seasons” in Genesis 1 is used in the Pentateuch to denote religious festivals). The Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, explains the lights in the sky the same way, as timekeepers put there by their high god, Marduk, so that humans can tell when the next religious festival in his honor was due to be celebrated.
Why is every seventh day a sacred day of rest? Because God rested on the seventh day of creation.
Biblical writings also provided answers to questions like, Why are we at odds with a particular nation? Because itʼs in their blood, their eponymous ancestors behaved badly toward us so itʼs little wonder that their descendants still do. Why did we kill and enslave people living in the land of Canaan? Because the alleged son of a son of Noah, named “Canaan” was allegedly cursed along with all of his descendants, the Canaanites, to be the slaves to Noahʼs other sons.
Hermann Gunkel (1862—1932), a German Old Testament scholar, wrote The Legends of Genesis, the first part of his massive commentary on Genesis, in which he points out many cases of OT authors attempting to produce answers to questions of both a global and tribal nature, “The Varieties Of Legends In Genesis”
“The answers to such questions constitute the real content of the respective legends…
“Why has Japhet such an extended territory? Why do the children of Lot dwell in the inhospitable East? How does it come that Reuben has lost his birthright? Why is Gilead the border between Israel and the Aramæans? Why does Beersheba belong to us and not to the people of Gerar? Why is Shechem in possession of Joseph? Why have we a right to the holy places at Shechem and Machpelah? Why has Ishmael become a Bedouin people with just this territory and this God? How does it come that the Egyptian peasants have to bear the heavy tax of the fifth, while the fields of the priests are exempt? The usual nature of the answer given to these questions by our legends is that the present relations are due to some transaction of the patriarchs: the tribal ancestor bought the holy place, and accordingly it belongs to us, his heirs; the ancestors of Israel and Aram established Gilead as their mutual boundary, and so on. A favorite way is to find the explanation in a miraculous utterance of God or some of the patriarchs, and the legend has to tell how this miraculous utterance came to be made in olden times. And this sort of explanation was regarded as completely satisfactory, so that there came to be later a distinct literary variety of ‘charm’ or ‘blessing.’”
“Along with the above we find etymological legends or features of legends, as it were, beginnings of the science of language… Ancient Israel spent much thought upon the origin and the real meaning of the names of races, mountains, wells, sanctuaries, and cities. To them names were not so unimportant as to us, for they were convinced that names were somehow closely related to the things. It was quite impossible in many cases for the ancient people to give the correct explanation, for names were, with Israel as with other nations, among the most ancient possessions of the people, coming down from extinct races or from far away stages of the national language… Early Israel as a matter of course explains such names without any scientific spirit and wholly on the basis of the language as it stood. It identifies the old name with a modern one which sounds more or less like it, and proceeds to tell a little story explaining why this particular word was uttered under these circumstances and was adopted as the name. We too have our popular etymologies. How many there are who believe that the noble river which runs down between New Hampshire and Vermont and across Massachusetts and Connecticut is so named because it ‘connects’ the first two and ‘cuts’ the latter two states! Manhattan Island, it is said, was named from the exclamation of a savage who was struck by the size of a Dutch hat worn by an early burgher, ‘Man hat on!’… Similar legends are numerous in Genesis and in later works. The city of Babel is named from the fact that God there confused human tongues (balal, Gen 11: 9); Jacob is interpreted as ‘heelholder’ because at birth he held his brother, whom he robbed of the birthright, by the heel (Gen 25:26); Zoar means ‘trifle,’ because Lot said appealingly, ‘It is only a trifle’ (Gen 19:20,22); Beersheba is ‘the well of seven,’ because Abraham there gave Abimelech seven lambs (21:28 ff.); Isaac (Jishak) is said to have his name from the fact that his mother laughed (sahak) when his birth was foretold to her (18:12), and so forth.
“In order to realize the utter naĩveté of most of these interpretations, consider that the Hebrew legend calmly explains the Babylonian name Babel from the Hebrew vocabulary, and that the writers are often satisfied with merely approximate similarities of sounds: for instance, “Cain” (Kajin) sounds like the Hebrew for “gotten” (kaniti, ‘I have acquired/gotten,’ hence the legend arose that when Cain was born to Eve she said, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (Gen 4:1); Reuben from rah beonji, ‘he hath regarded my misery’ (Gen 29:32), etc. Every student of Hebrew knows that these are not satisfactory etymologies…
“More important than these etymological legends are those whose purpose is to explain the regulations of religious ceremonials… [For instance, circumcision was common in the ancient world but we Israelites] perform the rite of circumcision in memory of an alleged covenant between our God and our eponymous ancestor Abraham, and also in memory of a story involving Moses, whose firstborn was circumcised as a redemption for Moses whose blood God demanded (Ex 4:24 ff.)… The stone at Bethel was first anointed by Jacob because it was his pillow in the night when God appeared to him (Gen 28.11 ff.), therefore we continue to anoint it today. At Jeruel—the name of the scene of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, Gen 22:1-19—God at first demanded of Abraham his child, but afterward accepted a ram, so we likewise sacrifice animals to redeem our first born. And so on…
“Why is this particular place and this sacred memorial so especially sacred? The regular answer to this question was, Because in this place the divinity appeared to our ancestor. In commemoration of this theophany we worship God in this place. Now in the history of religion it is of great significance that the ceremonial legend comes from a time when religious feeling no longer perceived as self-evident the divinity of the locality and the natural monument and had forgotten the significance of the sacred ceremony. Accordingly the legend has to supply an explanation of how it came about that the God and the tribal ancestor met in this particular place. Abraham happened to be sitting under the tree in the noonday heat just as the men appeared to him, and for this reason the tree is sacred (Gen 19:1 ff.). The well in the desert, Lacha-roi, became the sanctuary of Ishmael because his mother in her flight into the desert met at this well the God who comforted her (Gen 16:7 ff.). Jacob happened to be passing the night in a certain place and resting his head upon a stone when he saw the heavenly ladder; therefore this stone is our sanctuary (Gen 28:10 ff). Moses chanced to come with his flocks to the holy mountain and the thorn bush (Ex 3:1 ff.). Probably every one of the greater sanctuaries of Israel had some similar legend of its origin.
“Other sorts of legends… undertake to explain the origin of a locality. Whence comes the Dead Sea with its dreadful desert? The region was cursed by God on account of the terrible sin of its inhabitants. Whence comes the pillar of salt yonder with its resemblance to a woman? That is a woman, Lotʼs wife, turned into a pillar of salt in punishment for attempting to spy out the mystery of God (Gen 19:26). But whence does it come that the bit of territory about Zoar is an exception to the general desolation? Because God spared it as a refuge for Lot (19:17-22).”
“Answers” like those above are no longer assumed to be true.
We moderns have learned the benefits of investigating questions using all possible comparative historical, linguistic, and scientific means, even leaving questions open if those means fail us.
Instead of relying primarily on biblical writings to supply answers, moderns rely on electronic devices that connect us with countless scholarly resources, a worldwide library of ancient and modern writings and images at our fingertips, including sights from space and deep inside matter. Such devices show us the outermost regions of the cosmos as well as whatʼs inside our bodies, illustrating how it works, and even tell us the weather a week in advance. Such devices teach as well as entertain (functions more often served in the past by biblical stories). They also keep us in touch with one another. They have become humanityʼs new place to turn to, like Bibles used to be. Thereʼs much more to read about today and learn than what the Bible says.
Ever since investigations of nature via observation and experimentation, and later, since the invention of telescopes and microscopes, we have turned more toward the cosmos as something that can continually expand our minds and lead to never ending exploration. Studying the book of nature has proven to be a far more fascinating and mind-expanding experience for far more educated people today, than, say, studying the books of the Bible.
We continue to discover new Lego-like ways to stick atoms together and produced new chemicals, new organisms, as well as new machines, new computing devices and robots.
We continue to discover new ways to smash together sub-atomic particles and explore the results.
We continue to discover new ways to gaze upon and measure the effects of stellar explosions, the effects of galaxies colliding with one another, even the effects of entire clusters of galaxies colliding with one another, to discover new energies and forces at work and how they interact.
We continue to discover new ways to study the past, as well as new ways to think about the cosmos and its possible futures.
We also continue to discover new Lego-like ways to stick together stories and characters from the worldʼs writings both past and present to forge fascinating new ones.
Those are what expand the minds of educated moderns today.
Or, as Robert G. Ingersoll, Americaʼs “Great Agnostic” put it to conservative Christians in his day, “We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your moldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this yearʼs fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.” (“The Gods,” 1872)
Conservative Christians admit that the divinely inspired laws of the Babylonian King, Hammurabi, predate the alleged time when Moses received divinely inspired laws. The Laws of Hammurabi were believed to have been directly inspired or handed down by a god. A picture shows King Hammurabi receiving them, or receiving inspiration directly from a god standing beside him, the sun god Shamash. Later on the Israelites claimed that their leader, Moses, received laws from Yahweh.
Proto-Canaanite script, with its predecessor and main offshoot. From F.M. Cross, “The Origin and Early Evolution of the Alphabet,” Eretz Israel, 8. Jerusalem, 1967
There were also stories about gods directing people how they wanted their temples built that preceded tales in the Bible about Yahweh directing a king of Israel how His temple was to be built. See Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology. The author is a professor at a conservative Christian seminary who concludes that “Satan” was making ancient people do the things that Satan knew in advance that God was going to make his people do later. So the professorʼs hypothesis is that Satan was counterfeiting Godʼs moves in advance. Without employing such a hypothesis itʼs obvious that much of the OT simply fits its milieu, its time, place and culture. Niehausʼ book was quite a source of frustration for a Christian at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary who wrote a paper critiquing it, and concluded the following:
“Niehaus frames his book with bookend chapters that state clearly what he is setting out to show, in particular that demonic activity may be attributing to the similarities seen in the almost parallel appearing texts of other ANE cultures. However, for the reader who comes to the text in most cases from a faith background, Niehaus does not offer an easy path at all to reach the conclusion that God has indeed shown Himself unique and sovereign against the backdrop of the(not real) gods of the neighbors of His covenant people Israel. The majority of the book leaves the reader unengaged as they are not shown a true contrast to what they want to know to be biblical supremacy, showing the covenantal love of the Creator of the universe for His children. Instead, the feeling a reader may walk away with is one of frustration with the lack of differentiation.”
Even conservative Christians who date the time of Moses as early as possible, are forced to admit that many aspects of these ancient Israelite tales reflect earlier ideas in the ancient Near East, i.e., earlier creation stories, earlier stories of receiving laws from a god, and earlier stories of babies left in rivers who grow up to be great leaders. The “baby left in a river story” of Moses is similar to that of Sumerian king Sargon I left in a caulked basket in the Euphrates. Even the ancient Greeks had a story about the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, being left in the Tiber but without a basket.
In William Deverʼs book, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, he writes that archaeological investigations of Moses and the Exodus have been
“discarded as a fruitless pursuit… the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. A Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C., where many scholars think the Biblical traditions concerning the god Yahweh arose. But archaeology can do nothing to confirm such a figure as a historical personage, much less prove that he was the founder of later Israelite region.”
About Leviticus and Numbers he writes that these are
“clearly additions to the ‘pre-history’ by very late Priestly editorial hands, preoccupied with notions of ritual purity, themes of the ‘promised land,’ and other literary motifs that most modern readers will scarcely find edifying much less historical.”
Dever writes that
“the whole ‘Exodus-Conquest’ cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term ‘myth’: perhaps ‘historical fiction,’ but tales told primarily to validate religious beliefs.”
What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It is not easy reading. But Dever recommends an anthology by the Biblical Archaeology Society, published by Prentice Hall entitled Ancient Israel, edited by Hershel Shanks — a book that is very readable. Those testifying for Deverʼs book (on the back cover) are: Paul D. Hanson, Professor of Divinity and Old Testament at Harvard University; David Noel Freedman, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Michigan; Philip M. King, Professor at Boston College and author of Jeremiah; William W. Hallo, Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University; and Bernhard W. Anderson, Professor of Old Testament, Boston University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Like Dever, the above scholars are not a bunch of minimalists nor radical revisionists. But their opinions demonstrate that a literalistic inerrantistic reading of Exodus is not widely held.
Archaeology and the Exodus by Rabbi Ken Spiro
Another good book is, It Ainʼt Necessarily So by Matthew Sturgis which is an excellent introduction to the current state of archaeological discovery, focusing on its divergence from traditional biblical interpretation.
In short, the Pentateuch reads like a story “about” Moses, written in the third person, and from the point of view of later editors (as demonstrated by many little phrases scattered throughout the Pentateuch) rather than being a story written entirely by Moses. In fact, whomever wrote the Pentateuch, they did not make any great effort to disguise the fact that Moses “wrote” only select portions, not the whole books, just sections mentions within them. See my online article
Myth of a Massive Exodus of Hebrews from Egypt and their Overnight Genocidal Conquest
Archaeologically speaking, the change from “Canaanite” to “Israelite” appears to have been gradual, more evolutionary than revolutionary. Did full scale massacres occur? Or are the stories in the book of Joshua yet another instance of biblical hyperbole? Note especially how “Canaanit-ish” the ancient Israelites were, or, how much Canaanite thought and culture lived on via the Israelites:
The Hebrew language is in fact a “language of Canaan,” as says the prophet (Isaiah 19:18), a conclusion amply confirmed by ancient inscriptions. In scholarly terms, Hebrew is a “southern dialect of the Canaanite language.” From its earliest appearance until the Babylonian destruction, Hebrew was written in the Canaanite alphabet.
As with language and the alphabet, so with culture generally: Ancient Israelite culture was in many respects a subset of Canaanite culture. The most powerful and extensive demonstration of this last statement comes from the body of literature uncovered at the site of Ugarit.
The Canaanite King Kirta of the Ugaritic epic with the same name, was called out by his own son who is shown speaking like a Hebrew prophet calling out rulers for their lack of solicitude for widows, orphans, and the poor:
Another clay tablet reveals something of the Canaanitesʼ family values:
ʽStarting from today I Yaremano give up all my properties to my wife Baydawe and two sons Yataleeno and Yanhamo. If one of my sons treats his mother Baydawe meanly, he must pay five hundred pieces of silver for the king. Beyond that he should take off his shirt, leave it on the doorʼs lock and go into the street. But the one who treats his mother Baydawe with respect and consideration, his mother will give him all the properties.ʼ
The Israelites shared with their neighbors the eastward orientation of their tabernacle and temple, the placement of important cultic objects within them, the designation of areas of increasing holiness, rules for access to the Holy Place and Holy of Holies, as well as practices like circumcision and sacrificial offerings. [Dr. Bealeʼs admissions, and heʼs a biblical inerrantist and Evangelical Christian]
They agreed with their ancient neighbors that it was important to appease a high divinity via building a temple, saying prayers, giving praises, having priests and sacrifices, all important to a nationʼs blessing and protection granted from its high god. For instance, after Babylon had been plundered by the king of Assyria, the next king of Babylon interpreted the invasion as a punishment sent by Babylonʼs high god who had been angered by his peopleʼs lack of righteous behavior and lack of worship of Marduk:
“[The citizens of Babylon] had oppressed the weak, and handed the weak into the power of the strong. Inside the city there was tyranny, receiving of bribes, people plundering each otherʼs things, sons cursing fathers in the street, slaves cursing masters, they put an end to offerings [to the gods], they laid hands on the property of the temple of the gods, and sold silver, gold and precious stones. . . . Marduk [the high god of Babylon] grew angry and devised evil to overwhelm the land and destroy the peoples,”
—cf. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 5.
Ancient cultures also praised their high moral gods in ways very similar to how the Hebrewʼs praised theirs. In a ritual for the Babylonian New Year festival, the Babylonian high god, Marduk, was invoked in this fashion:
“My lord is my god, my lord is my ruler, is there any lord apart from him?”
Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II prayed at his accession to Marduk:
“Everlasting lord, master of all that exists, grant to the king, whom you love, and whose name you name, all that is pleasant to you. Keep him on the right way…You have created me and entrusted to me the dominion over all peoples. O lord, let me according to your grace, which you pour over them all, love your exalted might, and create in my heart fear of your divinity.”
And in the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, the high moral god Marduk is depicted as:
“The trust of the land, city and people. The people shall praise him [Marduk] forever…At his name the gods shall tremble and quake…Who administers justice, uproots twisted testimony, In whose place falsehood and truth are distinguished…Who uprooted all enemies… snuffed out all wicked ones…his name shall be the truth!” (Tablet VI:135—36, 146 and VII:39—40, 43, 45, 54).
He [Marduk] shall be ʽLord of All the Godsʼ…No one among the gods shall [make himself equal] to him.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VI:141 and VII:14
He [Marduk] established the holy heavens… creator of the earth above the waters, establisher of things on high…who made the worldʼs regions…He created “places” and fashioned the netherworld.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:16, 83, 89, 135
He [Marduk] patterned the days of the year…established the positions of Enlil and Ea [referring to the rotation of stars in the sky]…made the moon appear, entrusted (to him) the night…assigned to the crown jewel of nighttime to mark the day (of the month)…[Marduk] d[efined?] the celestial signs [for religious festivals]…the doorbolt of sunrise…the watches of night and day.
—Enuma Elish Tablet V:3, 5, 8, 12—13, 23, 44, 46 [Compare Genesis 1 that tells of Yahweh creating the sun and moon for “signs and seasons,” literally for religious festivals in Yahwehʼs honor, same as in the earlier tale in Enuma Elish. The same Hebrew word translated as “seasons” appears elsewhere in the Pentateuch meaning religious festivals.]
He [Marduk] made mankind…creatures with the breath of life…creator of all people.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VI:33,129 & VII:89
He [Marduk] shall be the shepherd of the [Mesopotamians], his creatures.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VI:107
Creation, destruction, absolution, punishment: Each shall be at his [Mardukʼs] command.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VI:131-32
His [Mardukʼs] word is truth, what he says is not changed, Not one god has annulled his utterance.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:151—52
Word of him [Marduk] shall endure, not to be forgotten.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:31—2
Let them ever speak of his [Mardukʼs] exaltation, let them sing his praises!
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:24
His [Mardukʼs] beneficent roar shall thunder over the earth.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:120
[Marduk,] who crossed vast Tiamat [sea goddess] back and forth in his wrath, Spanning her like a bridge at the place of single combat.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:74
He [Marduk], profound of wisdom, ingenious in perception, Whose heart is so deep that none of the gods can comprehend it.
—Enuma Elish Tablet VII:117—18
[Quotations from Enuma Elish trans. by Benjamin R. Foster, From Distant Days: Myths, Tales and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1995)]
There are Bible verses that are very similar to all of the praises of Marduk above, including treading down the waves of the sea and defeating monsters.
Canaanite Religion, Israelite Religion
As well as this piece:
The Rise of Monotheism and Israelʼs Theological Worldview [Key Articles That Sum Up What Scholars Are Discussing]
I want to believe in God and a personal afterlife, and like Frank Schaeffer, author of “Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace” (son of the apologist Francis Schaeffer), I do not deny myself prayers to God. I try in all ways to learn what is true, including prayer to God during times of questioning, questing and need. But both the cosmos and the Bible raise many questions of pain and suffering as well as competency of the Designer (who is possibly a Tinkerer), including whether the human species will even last. The stars have billions of years of life left in them since they burn via nuclear fusion and more stars continue being born in distant clusters. One can easily imagine the stars outlasting humanity by far. I also wonder how much truth lay behind the stories of Jesusʼ miracles in the Gospels. Regarding the latter question, Jesus was probably an apocalyptic prophet, but I tend to doubt the resurrection and other miracle stories, in fact you can see certain stories about Jesus grow in the telling from Mark to Matthew, Luke and John: “Gospel Trajectories & The Resurrection (questions as well as sources to read or listen to)”
Furthermore, almost all the miracles occurred either in some unspecified “wilderness” or in small towns in Galilee, i.e., Jesus never visited the largest cities of Galilee nor is spoken of as having performed miracles in them such as Sepphoris which was located near Nazareth, nor did he perform miracles in other large cities like Caesarea Philippi, Tiberius, Hippos (the last two being on the shores of the Lake of Galilee). Instead, three smaller cities, mere towns, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum encompassed the area where Jesus performed most of his miracles, which scholars have appropriately nicknamed “the Evangelical Triangle.” Even after the people of those towns allegedly saw Jesusʼ miracles the citizens did not hail Jesus and start to follow him. So the Gospels have Jesus denouncing the three towns where he allegedly performed most of his miracles, and warning that judgment would fall on them. As for Jesusʼ greatest nature miracles, they were only said to have been seen by a few apostles in a boat (stilling a storm, walking on water), or on an unnamed mountaintop (the transfiguration, three apostles were allegedly there). Interestingly, the fourth Gospel, allegedly written by the same John who was one of the three apostles who viewed the transfiguration, does not mention that particular miracle at all. The only large city Jesus visits is Jerusalem where he is captured and crucified, and he performs no public healings there per the synoptic Gospels but merely preaches (except for one miracle of healing in Jerusalem mentioned in the late fourth Gospel). Even the late added narrative of the bodily ascension of Jesus in Luke-Acts, is said to have only been seen by the remaining eleven apostles. Here is a guy rising into the clouds, but apparently doesnʼt want everybody to see it. Even weirder is how in Luke the raised Jesus proves he is flesh and bone and then “led them out” of Jerusalem to Bethany, but with no mention of anybody noticing, no mention of people spying the raised Jesus, or the apostles shouting Hosanna as this resurrected flesh and bone Jesus allegedly is leading his apostles out from one large city to a nearby town (compare all the Hosannas when Jesus entered the city). In other words, Jesusʼ exit is very hush hush. And as I said Jesusʼ alleged miracles are only said to have happened in out of the way places, like some unspecified “wilderness” or on an unspecified “mountaintop” or in three towns in particular (not even cities) in Galilee (where they rejected him), or the most spectacular miracles are only seen by a few apostles. Not sure I believe such stories, including the raising of Lazarus tale in the fourth Gospel which seems to have resulted from combining earlier tales in earlier Gospels, resulting in a new story: “Scent from heaven? Who nose? Do tales of Jesusʼ anointing, resurrection & bodily ascension, bear the aroma of truth?”
Add to that the way the resurrection tales contradict one another, and how nobody sees Jesus exit the tomb. His bodily resurrection is an implied miracle in the first and earliest Gospel but is declared in the two last-written Gospels of Luke and John to be a very physical resurrection. The earliest telling in Mark says only that the tomb is declared empty. The closest we come to a first person letter from someone saying they saw the raised Jesus is where Paul mentions in two letters that “he appeared to me,” thatʼs all he says about it, and lists some appearances to others, with no times or places mentioned nor anything that was said or heard. And Paul says Jesus had a “spiritual body” instead of mentioning that Jesus had “flesh and bone” like in the last Gospels written, Luke-Acts. The earliest Gospel, Mark, does not have a post-resurrection appearance story. It just ends with the women fleeing an empty tomb, frightened, and telling no one anything (the Greek is highly emphatic, involving a repetition of the same Greek word to emphasize that the women did not say “anything” to “any[one]” [the Greek reads, oudeis oudeis], so how and when did the story about the discovery of an empty tomb arise? One wonders, since the text states emphatically that the women did not say “anything to anyone” about such a discovery. Sounds like even the empty tomb story might have arisen later. Paul certainly doesnʼt mention it, or the women. But later Gospels build considerably on that tale in Mark). Meanwhile the number of words and lessons allegedly taught by the resurrected Jesus AFTER he was raised, continued to rise in number from Mark to Matthew, and then reach their peak in Luke-Acts and John. Obviously the story was growing over time. “The Word About The Growing Words Of The Resurrected Jesus”.
Also see “New Testament Questions Galore From a Wide Range of Christian and Non-Christian Biblical Scholars”
So I donʼt know what to believe. Because nature contains a variety of pains that humans have struggled to bypass or avoid via intelligence, city planning, safety regulations, modern medicine and dentistry, and advanced detection devices that predict the weather and other changes in the environment (including marking danger zones), rather than accept such pains as part of Godʼs wonderful design. And itʼs not “sinners” who are plagued most by natureʼs pains but people unlucky enough to be in the paths of disasters and epidemics, or unintelligent enough not to take safety measures, or economically impoverished so their city or country cannot afford modern safety techniques and conveniences. Therefore natureʼs pains are not focused on “sinners.”
Also, the human species seems destined to perish while the cosmos goes on, and we might not even be the coolest species in the cosmos. Meanwhile the Gospels plead “mystery,” and Jesus says in places that he spoke to crowds (in those towns I mentioned) in ways “that they might not understand,” then then damned them for not hailing him and following him.
Ah, but there are miracles around the world if you read some Christian apologists. Especially in South America, where Catholicism is huge, or where the Pentecostal revival in the Philippines took place. Though other Christians doubt and question the wealth of Catholic miracles, and still other Christians doubt the alleged miracles in the Philippines. And we see the web articles and books by Joe Nickell who has been investigating a lot of allegedly Catholic miracle stories. While Keith Augustine has a web article about NDEs that raises many questions Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences. (Keith also has a book coming out in 2015, co-authored with Michael Martin on NDEs) Endless debates.
I figure that if there really was an infinite Being, one that did not want to remain very mysterious and behind the scenes, and/or that wanted everyone to be “saved” via trusting in tales of one true religion, wouldnʼt it be plainer?
So Iʼm agnostic, painfully so as I grow older, since I canʼt help but wish that this life and its memories does not end like everything else I see ending around us. I have lived long enough to see the next generation grow up ignorant of many of the key moments in history, song, literature, comedy and drama from my generation. The past seems doomed to be forgotten, along with the individuals in it. Cultural movements being and then end. Ideas change as well as styles. My own memories of earlier decades has declined, which I notice when I talk with friends from decades past. Iʼll keep praying and hoping. Add to that some meditating (hat tip Will Bagley).
See also this blog post with links to Miracles from all religions (including amazing coincidences that seem to just happen and are not related to a religion), when viewed together, provide a crazy mixed bag of “evidence.” Miracles from all religions (including amazing coincidences that seem to just happen and are not related to a religion), when viewed together, provide a crazy mixed bag of “evidence.” So how can “God or WhateverIsOutThere” expect us to know what to make of them?
